


Here's Looking at You, Kid

by Anonymous



Series: Within/Without [14]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 3x15, 3x16, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24450223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “I get it,” Buck said, even though he didn’t, entirely. “We can just forget this, and go back to—”“I don’t wanna go back,” Eddie interrupted him. “I didn’t say that. I’m saying I’m stuck.”Buck changed tacks. “Are we a family?” he asked bluntly.Eddie asks for Buck’s help with Chris. The conversation takes an unexpected turn.(post 3x16, with flashbacks to post 3x15)
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Within/Without [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738876
Comments: 52
Kudos: 573
Collections: Anonymous





	Here's Looking at You, Kid

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Eddie said as they left Red’s funeral.

“What?” Buck felt like he had a bad head-cold; he’d carried Red’s helmet and wept through the whole service. There had been no one to accept the folded-up flag, so they’d placed it in the grave on top of the coffin. His ears were still ringing from the gun salute.

“It’s about Chris,” Eddie said. “Can you follow me home?”

Buck nodded stiffly, and they parted ways in the parking lot, Buck going to his jeep and Eddie to his stupid monster truck that he was still paying off in increments. Traffic was terrible, the drive taking twice as long as it should have, but Buck spent the full duration lost in a fog of sorrow, of lonely presentiments of lonely deaths. He wondered, glumly, if he was destined to forever fall in love with people he couldn’t have. Would he spend his whole life aching like this? Aching wasn’t a stable condition; it had to resolve into something, right? 

It was only eleven, so Christopher was still at school, leaving Eddie’s house empty and quiet. “You hungry?” Eddie asked, and Buck shook his head. He’d filled up on pastries at the funeral and choked down a cup of disgusting coffee, thick with sugar sludge yet still mouth-strippingly bitter. It left him feeling out of sorts, vaguely ill.

“So what’s up?” he said, beginning to divest himself of his dress blues. Eddie followed suit. They left a messy pile of jackets, ties, and shirts on the kitchen table and wandered into the living room, taking up their habitual spots on the couch.

“Uh.” Eddie rubbed his chin. “Feels like we haven’t seen each other in a while.”

Buck reminded him that they saw each other every day, but he knew that wasn’t what Eddie meant. Things between them had been strained since Eddie’s near-fatal adventure a few weeks ago. Buck had drawn back slightly, reeling from the experience of having his heart buried forty feet below ground under half a ton of dirt and mud—

( _“…that was too fucking close, Eddie.”_

_A long, gaping silence._

_“…I know.”_

_I thought I was gonna have to tell him—I thought I was gonna have to tell Chris that you weren’t coming home. That you were…”_

_“Buck. Look at me.”_

_“I can’t. I can’t look at you right now.”_

_“Please?”  
__  
“Goddammit, Eddie.”_ )

—and they’d been out of sorts with each other ever since.

To make matters worse, Bobby had summoned Buck into his office a few days later—

_(“Do we need to talk about what happened at the farm the other night?” Bobby asked._

_“You tell me.” He sounded stubborn, childish._

_“Then yes, we do need to talk about it,” Bobby said._

_Buck crossed his arms and glared at the floor._

_“You and Eddie…”_

_He didn’t say anything._

_“Help me out here, Buck.”_

_“What d’you want me to say, Bobby? Eddie almost_ died _—”_

_“Yes. Eddie almost died, and you lost control.”  
  
_ _“Of course I did, he’s my—…”_

_“Your what?”_

_“My best friend,” Buck said hollowly._

_“I’m sending you home,” Bobby told him. “You’re not ready to be back. I want you to take two more days, and I want you to talk to somebody.”_

_“I don’t need to see Frank!” he said hotly.  
  
_ _“Somebody else, then. Rosemary. You know the drill, Buck. After a trauma, it’s important to—”_

_“I’m not traumatized!” He couldn’t believe Bobby sometimes. “Eddie’s the one who—”_

_“Eddie will have his own counseling session. But we’re talking about you right now.”_

_“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m_ fine _.”_

_Bobby only raised his eyebrows.  
__  
“I_ am _,” he insisted._

_“I’m not blind and I’m not stupid, Buck. I can see what’s in right in front of my face, even if you can’t. Or maybe you just don’t want to. I don’t know. Either way, you should talk to someone about what happened back there. I’m not going to order you, but you should consider it a very strong suggestion.”_

_“Who do_ you _talk to?” Buck demanded.  
  
__“Excuse me?”_

_“Bobby, you’ve sent me for counseling more times than I can count. I’ve seen everybody there—Hen, Eddie, Chimney, hell, I’ve even run into Maddie in the parking lot—everybody except you. How come I’ve never seen_ you _there, Cap?”_

_“That’s none of your business,” Bobby said, a bit of steel creeping into his voice, but Buck ignored the warning._  
  
_“No, Bobby, I really wanna know: who the fuck do you talk to, huh?”_

_He was definitely getting written up for this._

_“I talk to God,” Bobby said at last. “Ever heard of him?”_

_“God? You mean like in OMFG?_ That _God?”_

_Mercifully, Bobby laughed._

_“Sorry,” Buck said. “I can be a jackass.”_

_“Won’t dispute you there, kid.”_

_“I can’t talk to God about Eddie,” he admitted. “I’m not religious, I don’t believe in—well, anything really. Just people, I guess. You. Christopher. Eddie.”_

_“Then do yourself a favor,” Bobby said, “and talk to Eddie_.”)

—and after that, Buck could barely manage eye contact with Eddie when they weren’t working. He felt Bobby watching him, watching _them_ , but he kept his head down, determined not to give Bobby further ammunition. Bobby did try to corner him again one morning while Eddie was out, taking Christopher to his well-visit at the pediatrician, but he was saved by the bell. Outside the firehouse, he lavished his usual attention on Chris, and as long as he didn’t end up alone with Chris’s dad, otherwise known as his best friend Eddie, he could manage. Then he’d met Red and gotten distracted for a couple weeks, but Red’s death had left him feeling emptier than ever.

“So what’s going on with Chris?” he asked Eddie now.

“You missed a tantrum from hell this morning,” Eddie said. “Jesus Christ, it was horrible. He screamed some awful shit, like he wished he lived in a different world, wished he had a better family. Everything I did was wrong—eat this fried egg even though you think the texture’s gross, wear these pants Abuela bought you even though you hate the color—he said he wished I was gone, wished I was dead. Then he asked for you.”

“Oh,” Buck said.

He used to act up sometimes as a kid, trying to provoke some sort of reaction out of his parents. But no matter what he did, his parents remained distant as ever; circumspect, even unbiologically cold. And though Buck was the one doing the kicking and hollering, a part of him was always removed from the scene, totally passive—a sad spectator of his family life, like he was watching a silent movie in an empty theater.

Eddie was a very different sort of parent. Eddie externalized his messy emotions, scolding Chris for little things: put on your shoes, comb your hair, pick up your legos. Occasionally Eddie would get mad, steaming mad, but there was no vehemence behind it. It bore no resemblance to the violence Buck had grown up with, which wasn’t even physical violence but rather the emotional sort, the banal kind of cruelty enacted within the family.

“What did you do?” he asked Eddie.

“I let him scream it out.” Eddie shrugged. “We were already running late, so I couldn’t let him call you. I couldn’t figure out what was behind the tantrum, like, what he actually wanted to get out of it. Did he want my attention, did he just want me to hug him and tell him it would all be okay? Or was he telling me to stay away, to fuck off from his nine years of life on this stupid shitty planet and let him grow beyond me? I know how bad he wants to be independent, but…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

That was a lot of words for Eddie, and Buck took a moment to process them.

“Maybe you should talk to Bobby,” he suggested. Because every time Eddie trusted him with a confidence it opened up another suture in his poor stitched-together heart. “He knows a lot more about kids.” 

“Not _my_ kid,” Eddie said, with surprising force.

Buck met his eyes, because he had to. Eddie was giving him a stern, blazing look. It warmed his insides, but it also made his skin feel a bit scorched and crispy, like he’d spent too long in the sun.

“Chris doesn’t wish you were dead,” he said at last. 

“No, of course not,” Eddie agreed easily. “That’s not the part that bothers me. Ever since the skateboard thing, I’ve been feeling like… I don’t know. My instincts were all wrong there. First I overreacted, then I over-corrected, and then _you_ fixed it by inventing something new. And Christopher, he-he needs that, you know? Somebody who’s _different_ from me, who’s gonna push me to—…”

“Being a single parent is hard,” Buck said, when it became clear Eddie wasn’t going to elaborate. “It makes sense that you—that you wouldn’t want to do that forever.”

“But I’m not really a single parent, am I?” Eddie said, tilting his head to the side.

“Right, not with Abuela and Pepa and Carla in the mix.” Buck ran his finger down the crease pressed into his slacks.

“And—” Eddie made a face that could have been either pained or amused, Buck wasn’t sure. “Well, whatever. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“No?” Buck didn’t know whether to feel relieved or alarmed. 

“No. It’s pretty serious, actually.”

“I’m listening, Eds. You know you can tell me anything.” His heart was acting up again, but differently now. It wanted to bust out of his chest and wrestle whatever problem Eddie was facing to the ground and hold it there, pinned, while Eddie punched its lights out.

“I know I can.” Eddie offered him a tight half-smile. “You know how I took Chris for all his check-ups last week?”

“You said everything went fine!” Buck exclaimed, his voice coming out a good octave higher than usual. “Is something wrong with—”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Eddie interrupted quickly, before he could spiral into full-blown panic. “Nothing’s wrong, but I went back in yesterday to meet with the pediatrician and orthopedic specialist. They wanted to talk about the possibility of Chris having another surgery.”

“What—” his mouth was very dry. “What kind of surgery?”

“Tendon lengthening. Getting his Achilles stretched could help him walk with a flatter foot.” Eddie looked very grave. The furrow between his brows had deepened, and the lines on his forehead seemed more pronounced. “But it’s not a sure thing. He’s still growing, so any corrections could be temporary, could create more problems as he gets bigger, meaning more surgeries down the line. And it’s a hell of a recovery, months of PT and bracing and—” Eddie closed his eyes.

Buck reached across the space between them and grabbed Eddie’s hand. Eddie squeezed back immediately. When he opened his eyes, tears had beaded on his lower lashes like tiny diamonds.

“I don’t know what to do,” Eddie rasped out, clutching Buck’s fingers even harder. “Like, Christopher’s so desperate to do more, to be more independent, the other day he even said something about summer camp—”

“ _What_?” Buck squawked.

“Yeah, fuckin’ _summer camp_ , can you believe it?” Eddie shook his head. “And I don’t wanna be the dad who’s holding my kid back ‘cause I’m afraid, but… I haven’t mentioned the surgery to him, ’cause I know he’ll want it, anything to help him keep up with the other kids, better, faster, stronger…” Eddie raised his eyebrows, and Buck rolled his eyes.

“Okay, so maybe that rings a bell…”

“Yeah, I thought it might. But here you are, and, well… What should we do? What… what do you think I should do?”

“I’d need to do some research,” Buck said, and Eddie laughed. “No, seriously, Eds. I don’t know enough about orthopedics, I’d have to make a pros and cons list—”

“They gave me brochures for all that,” Eddie interrupted. “Buck, you’re the one person in this world who loves Christopher like I do, like a par—I mean, like someone who wants what’s best for _him_ , not just whatever they want or think is best. You’re the only one I—… Not my parents. Not my abuela or my tía. Not even Carla. Tell me, what do you think I should do?” 

Buck’s mind was reeling. He was pretty damn sure Eddie had nearly said he loved Christopher like a _parent_. And did he? Did he, Buck, love Christopher like a parent? He had no frame of reference, not really, anything he knew of parenting was learnt from Bobby and Eddie—

It was too massive an idea for him to fathom, here in this moment. Eddie had asked him a question, and Eddie was waiting for an answer.

Buck salvaged what remained of his self-possession and released Eddie’s hand. He dragged his fingers through his hair, thinking hard. “Right before the tsunami hit, I asked Chris what he wanted to be when he grew up,” he said slowly. “First he said an astronaut or a pirate, but then he said a firefighter. And that—well, that made me really sad, ’cause, you know, that’s something Chris probably can’t do, and at the time, neither could I.”

“Yeah.”

“So I made him this little speech about how I hoped he’d find something he loved, ’cause it would show him the rest of his life. I was trying to make it into a pep talk—” Buck shook his head—"but he knew, Eddie, somehow that kid knew what I was really talking about. And you know what he said to me?”

“What?” Eddie asked.

“He patted my face and said, ‘You’re gonna be okay, kid.’” Buck smiled at the memory. “He just—fuck, Eddie. Christopher is my favorite person in the whole world. And, so, if you’re asking me, my answer is no. No to the surgery. Wait and see. Next week we take him rock-climbing, maybe this summer we get him back up on a surfboard. Chris isn’t some one-trick pony like me, he’s just starting to discover all the stuff he can do. So now feels like the wrong time to take all that away from him and stick him in a turbo brace, you know?”

“I agree completely,” Eddie said.

“Y-you do?” he stammered.

“I mean, you put it better than I could, but yeah,” Eddie said. He was smiling properly now. “No surgery, no braces. Maybe we reassess in the future. We’ll see what happens, and then we’ll… see.”

“We’ll see,” he echoed, smiling too.

“And for the record, you’re not a one-trick pony,” Eddie informed him.

“Aw shucks, Eds.” He breezed past it; he had to. Otherwise he’d want to ask Eddie questions he had no business asking. Questions like _you think I could be a parent, too?_ But being _like_ a parent wasn’t the same as actually _being_ a parent, Eddie hadn’t asked him to _be_ a parent, which would be crazy, because that would make him and Eddie—

The only thing worse than knowing he wanted something was knowing that he could never have it.

Eddie was giving him that stern, blazing look again.

All of a sudden, it was hard to inhale.

“Close your eyes,” Eddie said. His voice had gone strange and raspy.

“What?”

“Buck—” Eddie said warningly.

He shut up and closed his eyes.

Deprived of his sight, his other senses kicked into overdrive. The cozy, familiar scent of Eddie’s house, the comforting smell he associated with both Eddie and Christopher—the bitter traces of bad coffee still lingering on his tongue—the tightness in his chest—the rustle of Eddie’s clothes as he moved, the sound of his breathing—and maybe, just maybe, the warmth of Eddie’s breath ghosting over his lips—

A moment, suspended in time—

Then he heard Eddie sigh, and the warmth receded.

“I’m sorry,” he heard Eddie say heavily. “I… can’t.”

“Can I open my eyes?” he asked.

Eddie grunted, and Buck chose to interpret that as a yes.

Eddie’s face was brick red, and he was gazing at him almost defiantly. “I want to,” he said. “I do. I just can’t seem to… Fuck.”

“Do you want me to do it?” Buck asked.

“I… don’t know,” Eddie said.

“But it is a thing that you… want?” he confirmed.

Slowly, Eddie nodded.

“It’s a thing that I want, too.”

“There’s just… a lot to lose, if we—well, probably not you, if _I…_ ” Eddie dropped his head into his hands, rubbing at his temples. “I don’t trust myself not to—you know—and this is bigger than us, it’s—”

“Christopher.”

“Yeah.”

A weighty silence fell between them. Buck didn’t know what to say or do. Part of him was elated, burning up with joy that Eddie wanted to kiss him. But the other part of him, the part that had been bruised by Abby and Ali and everyone else who’d ever left—wondered if this _thing_ between him and Eddie might have been better left unacknowledged, unspoken.

There was, as Eddie said, a lot to lose. 

“This is my fault.” Eddie broke the silence, scowling off into middle-distance. “For starting a thing. And not… finishing it. ’Cause it all feels so huge and overwhelming in my head, this tug-of-war between what I think I should want and what I actually want, it’s like… total cognitive dissonance.”

Buck raised his eyebrows. Cognitive dissonance, huh?

“I’m not a total meathead,” Eddie told him, with some asperity.

“I know you’re not, Eds.”

“I know what double standards are, I know when I’m being a hypocrite, it just… doesn’t seem to make any difference. To my brain. ’S fucked up.”

“I get it,” Buck said, even though he didn’t, entirely. “We can just forget this, and go back to—”

“I don’t wanna go back,” Eddie interrupted him. “I didn’t say that. I’m saying I’m _stuck_.”

Buck changed tacks. “Are we a family?” he asked bluntly.

“You, me, and Chris.” Eddie nodded. “Yeah. We are.”

It was a gift, and it was given without hesitation. Buck’s eyes burned; of course he was gonna fucking cry now. “Good,” he choked out. “That’s… well, that’s really good. ’Cause being a family is the important thing here. Right? Like, we can start there, maybe?”

Eddie nodded again. The tense lines of his neck and shoulders softened. He looked massively, palpably, relieved.

And that stung, there was no denying it stung, because Buck wanted, he _wanted_ —

Family, though.

That was fucking seismic.

He could be patient.

He _could._

Because family was worth waiting for.

“It’ll be summer soon,” Eddie remarked.

“Uh huh…?” He didn’t follow.

“Chris loves summer,” Eddie said. “Last year you had the broken leg, but this year… We’ll do so much stuff this summer. The three of us.”

“The three of us,” Buck repeated. He… very much liked the sound of that. “Together.”

“Together,” Eddie agreed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Don't hate me for that ending! I would have written a more satisfying one, but Eddie was proving difficult to wrangle. He will be wrangled, though. 
> 
> Thank you very much for reading! I am endlessly appreciative of you all.


End file.
